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From: Marcel Offermans <marcel.offermans@luminis.nl>
To: "general@incubator.apache.org" <general@incubator.apache.org>
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Subject: Re: [PROPOSAL] Apache Ace
Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 11:46:37 +0200
References: <91363FE9-DA18-4FDB-B80F-1299A75DE2AF@luminis.nl>
 <16d6c6200904041139x29ea84a8i34f959c448acdaac@mail.gmail.com>
 <69BF31D9-5176-4480-AA5D-E30BCE75132E@luminis.nl>
 <80A4D320-A9CB-46A0-9341-E495CDF77DCE@sonatype.com>

Hello Jason,

On Apr 5, 2009, at 1:09 , Jason van Zyl wrote:

>> Equinox p2 was designed to replace the aging Update Manager in
>> Eclipse. It focusses on installing Eclipse-based applications from
>> scratch and updating them and can be extended to manage other types
>> of artifacts. If you look at the "agent" part, it is geared towards
>> desktop environments
>
> Not true.

> Jeff McAffer's demo at EclipseCon is a case in point. He provisioned
> an EC2 node using p2. [...] Jeff is very much focused on server side  
> provisioning as am I.

Let me rephrase that, it's geared more towards desktop and server  
environments, as compared to smaller (embedded, mobile) environments.  
That was the point I was trying to make here.

>> Note though, I'm no Equinox p2 expert. :)

> Then why are you proposing this when you don't even know what p2 is
> capable of?

We started working on this system when p2 did not even exist. I even  
remember talking to Jeff in those days about our system, but they  
decided to make their own, so you could equally well make this  
argument the other way round.

> It's just my opinion but anyone doing provisioning with OSGi has had
> their asses handed to them on a plate by the p2 guys.

In my opinion, p2 is fine if you are already doing everything "the  
Eclipse way" and are targetting desktops and servers. There are  
however other types of systems that need provisioning, and Apache Ace  
tries to cater for those too.

> Oleg and I were trying to make something and after looking around at
> everything -- and we did look at OBR -- we decided that p2 was good
> enough and we would help improve that.

OBR is a repository for components, augmented with metadata that  
describes dependencies. As such it's not a provisioning system, so in  
my opinion you should not compare it to p2.

> There's nothing wrong with competition but I think anyone doing OSGi
> provisioning is just going to look around in a year and find p2 has
> 95% of the market. It's a complicated problem and I think p2 is a
> solid base and be improved and adapted to support  things like OBR or
> anything else including non-OSGi systems.

Nobody can look into the future, and since both p2 and Ace are indeed  
software provisioning solutions, there will definitely be overlap in  
features. There are also differences though. In the end, the users  
will decide what they like best.

Greetings, Marcel


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